JOAN HUNT

'Greyhounds are art'

February 15, 1960

In Florida, where greyhound racing is a major spectator sport and a highly competitive business, Joan Hunt runs a highly successful racing kennel. When Joan went into the greyhound business four years ago, she found less than a welcome. "Greyhound men just didn't want a woman around," she says. But Joan, an artist and the daughter of Miami Judge Richard Hunt, has loved animals since childhood—"possums, coons, ducks, rabbits, anything I could catch." Though her college paintings won prizes, she decided after graduation to go into the business of breeding poodles. From poodles she advanced to greyhounds and greyhound racing, which, Joan claims, "is, after all, an art in itself." Today Joan's Gold Coast Kennel holds 100 dogs, of which she races 60 with trainer's help from a onetime professor of mathematics named Lawrence Gross. Her pride is Secret Session (above left), which holds the record of 33.7 seconds for 605 yards. "I knew I had arrived," says Joan, "when they all quit referring to me as Judge Hunt's daughter. Now I'm Secret Session's owner."